Chapter Sixteen: Serpent to Sinister
The Shadow Agent moved slowly down the alley that his scrying ability had led him to, one hand on the handgrip of the zat'nicket'al concealed underneath his coat. The metal of the handgun was cool beneath his hand as his gaze flicked over his surroundings.
The alley was empty of life. Even Dorou's sensitive eyes couldn't pick anyone out. But his scrying had sent him here… He stepped forward, picking his way through the slush on the ground, heightened senses on alert. For a moment, he wondered if he should have told – Jekyiss, wasn't it?- exactly where he was going. The man was a native, after all…
No, of course not, he told himself. The human would have just gotten in my way.
Movement at the far end of the passage. The Tau'ka focused his attention on it, senses quivering with anticipation. Yes, there was definitely something- someone- down there.
"Well, well, well, the little spy has come to play," said a resonant voice that echoed with bass tones. "I wondered how long it would take you, Tau'ka,"
Dorou peered at the figure, frowning as the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. Something was terribly wrong… Underneath the bass and resonance, he would have sworn that the voice of the Goa'uld was familiar.
The figure at the end of the alley moved closer. The host, Dorou saw, was a human male. Though his face was shaded by his hat- In the middle of the night? the Shadow Agent wondered- Dorou could still make out his features.
His blood ran cold. "You?" he said in horror, utterly stunned as he recognized the host's face. His skin prickled with fear.
The Goa'uld smiled. "Oh yes. All this time, Agent Dorou. All this time." He paced closer, slowly drawing one hand out of his pocket. "You have failed."
Dorou felt frozen in place with fear and disbelief, unable to move as light glinted off of the metallic object strapped to the Goa'uld's hand, picking up a faint red glow from a round, shilling-sized gem set in the palm. He knew what that was… how had he managed to find one? And how had the Goa'uld managed to take this host?
"Tell Hecate that Kheti sends his regards," the parasitic alien said, stopping just in front of Dorou. He raised his hand, the jewel-bearing palm of his hand hovering a few inches from the paralyzed Tau'ka's face. "You'll be seeing your goddess soon."
Before he could make his frozen muscles react, the ribbon device sent lances of blinding energy straight into Dorou's head to tear at the delicate tissues inside. The Tau'ka tried to scream as his ears began to bleed… but he couldn't… his lungs felt like they had collapsed. As he slowly fell to his knees at the Goa'uld's feet, a sense of utter failure made itself known to him through the pain, as did a single coherent thought: None of the others know that he's a host! Kheti will tear them to pieces from the inside!
Kheti laughed.
OSCOSCOSCOSCOSC
"Dorou's dead!"
Jekyll and Nemo both jumped as Skinner crashed into the library- at least, they had to assume it was Skinner, since they couldn't exactly see him.
"What?" Jekyll said, shocked. "Dead? But- how? Where is he? No, wait."
He hurried upstairs to his room, grabbing his bag of medical supplies and rushing to rejoin the other two League members. "Take me to him," he ordered Skinner, finally feeling confident now that there was something he could handle. He might not be a fighter, or particularly suited for gathering information in the field, but examining a patient- or a body- was one thing he could do for the League that none of the others could.
Skinner may have nodded, but he certainly complied. The invisible thief's footsteps headed out of the library. Hard on his heels were Jekyll and Nemo.
He led them at a run to an alley not too far from the headquarters as a few flakes of snow began to fall from the cloudy sky. About halfway up it was a body in a crumpled heap, lying in a pool of blood. "I use this alley as a shortcut," the thief told his companions as Jekyll hurried forward to examine Dorou's body. "I was comin' back t' Gray's place and found 'im 'ere, dead."
Nemo spotted a set of bare footprints in the slushy snow and nodded. They confirmed Skinner's part of the story.
Jekyll examined Dorou's corpse carefully. There were fresh bloodstains running from the Tau'ka's ears, nose, mouth, eyes, and, of all places, the beds of his fingernails. "He bled to death," he told the others, eyes wide at the brutality of the murder. "It looks like the mucosal tissues all burst their veins at once- if this happened inside as well as out, I think the vessels in his brain must have burst too, and if his lungs are like that, he would have drowned in his own blood. I can't tell exactly how long- it's so cold his body must have cooled immediately. The blood looks fairly fresh though- he must have been killed shortly after he left. Certainly within the last hour… My God, what could have done this to him? I've never seen anything like this!"
Whoever did it has good taste, Hyde commented approvingly as he babbled. Lots of blood. I couldn't do that without tearing the body to pieces.
Jekyll's stomach lurched at his alter ego's clear enthusiasm. "Shut up," he muttered, turning Dorou's left wrist over to get a better look at his nails. He paused, frowning. The Tau'ka's sleeve was rolled up. Cut into the skin of his inner forearm was a bloody image of a stylized serpent. At least, he thought it was a serpent- it had an odd, fin-like crest running down its back, and it almost seemed to have a beak. "Captain Nemo?" he asked. "Do you recognize this?"
Nemo knelt to see the cut. "I have not," he said. "Perhaps Mr. Fisher will recognize it, if it is related to the cult. Or Mr. Sawyer, as he has infiltrated them."
"But if it's the cult," Skinner said. "Then the Goa'uld know we're after 'em."
Jekyll stared at the body, feeling sick as he took in the horrible injures and what Skinner had said. "Dorou must have found something," he said. "He said he'd managed to scry out the Goa'uld- he must have found it."
If a Goa'uld could do that to an armed, alert Tau'ka, what would it do to one of them?
"And the Goa'uld killed him to protect its secret," Nemo added. He studied the slushy ground carefully, looking for signs of the killer. Sadly, the muck was not solid enough to retain any detail, except for Skinner's bare footprints in a drier patch. He frowned. "We have no way to inform the Tau'ka that their agent is dead," he said.
"They're gonna love that…" Skinner said. He sounded as if he were trying not to vomit.
Jekyll got to his feet. "Captain," he asked. "Can you take care of this?" He indicated Dorou's remains.
Nemo nodded, frowning in confusion. "Where are you going?"
But Jekyll had already left, hurrying back to the mansion at a run. He had remembered something vital, something that might just help them now.
Back in his rooms at the mansion, Jekyll dug around in the drawers of his desk, which were crammed with various scientific notes. At last, he came up with what he was looking for- a small, silvery sphere on a square base.
About time you remembered that, Hyde grumbled.
"Daria said I shouldn't use it unless it was an emergency. I think this qualifies." He fiddled with the controls, trying to remember how the device was supposed to work. After several moments, a few lights blinked on and it began to emit a faint humming sound.
"Is it supposed to do that?"
How the hell am I supposed to know?
Jekyll drummed his fingers nervously on the desktop, waiting. How long was this going to take? It had taken a week to travel to Verris by starship- would transmitting a message across that vast stretch of space take that long?
No, of course not. It didn't take a telegraph a week to cross the Atlantic, after all. But it was a lot further from here to Verris…
"Noclaf."
Jekyll jumped at the sound of the voice that came from the little transmitter. The silvery sphere on top had cleared, showing a familiar face in its depths as he pulled it closer to him.
"Daria!"
Daria's image blinked as she saw who was contacting her. She smiled. "Henry," she said, managing to convey a whole depth of warm emotion in the single word. Then the Tau'ka's expression turned to one of concern. "What's wrong? You look awful. Did something happen?"
"Yes," Jekyll told her, the memory of why he was calling cutting through his joy of seeing her again. This communicator was an amazing little device- he could hardly believe that he was talking directly to Daria, as far away as she was. "Daria, Dorou's dead."
She stared at him. "Dead?" she repeated, the transmitter making her voice echo slightly. "How? What killed him? What's going on over there?"
Quickly, Jekyll explained about Jason Fisher, the Goa'uld, and what they'd been doing for the past few weeks, pausing only briefly as Daria cursed.
"And you didn't contact me then why?" she demanded.
"I…" Jekyll began, realizing that if he had, he may have been able to avert this whole mess. Hyde sniggered in the back of his head. The doctor winced.
Daria must have noticed, because her expression softened. "Never mind," she told him. "The Council is not going to like this. A Shadow Agent dead and two Goa'uld on the loose. I told them sending a black-rank rookie to Earth was a bad idea."
Jekyll nodded. "I thought that your agents were supposed to be able to get along better with us humans," he said. "Not to speak ill of the dead, but Dorou didn't even try. He never could get my name right. Kept calling me Jenkins, or Jekiss…"
Daria laughed. "Most of us can relate better. Actually-" She broke off suddenly, head cocked as if she were listening to something. "Henry, I have to go."
"Go? But why?" Jekyll asked.
"No time- sorry!" The image of her face grew larger, as if she'd leaned closer to her transmitter. "I love you," she said.
"Daria-"
Daria's image vanished, leaving Jekyll with an empty transmitter and Hyde's mocking laughter in his mind.